A family owe their lives today to smoke alarms fitted by firefighters in their Darlington home.

Fire crews were called to a bedroom blaze in Coleridge Gardens just before 2am. They found the family out of the house.

Station Officer John Burke of Darlington fire station said: "There were three adults and a boy already on the pavement. The man of the house was alerted by the smoke alarms we fitted a couple of weeks ago.

"It proves their worth. At two in the morning with everybody asleep, without them it could have been a very different outcome. They are life savers."